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Author |
File Description |
Xerxes 3902 |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 02:43 AM
File Details |
# of Players: |
4 |
Version: |
AoM: The Titans |
HERO LINE WARS
A 2v2 multiplayer minigame by Xerxes 3902
Each player begins the game with a hero. The object of the game is to buy monsters at your Team Shop, which spawn in the enemy line, and overwhelm your enemies heroes. The more monsters you buy, the more Income you will regularly receive. Advance Ages and buy more powerful monsters until you are the last players left alive!
Features
-Game begins with random selection from 4 different heroes
-21 different creeps to purchase from 3 Ages, including 1 ultimate unit
-High quality sounds from Warcraft III-The Frozen Throne
-Simple, yet elegant map design
-Unique god powers for each hero
-Full Online Compatibility
Screens
Heroes at the ready
Shop Area
Setup Info
Player 1-Team 1-Zeus
Player 2-Team 2-Zeus
Player 3-Team 3-Zeus
Player 4-Team 4-Zeus
Player 5-Team 5-Zeus
Player 6-Team 6-Zeus
Player 7-Team 7-Isis
Player 8-Team 8-Odin
Player 9-Team 9-Oranos
UPDATE: This is the original, however Khan And Steak has transformed it into something much more attractive and playable. Download it athttp://aom.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=8125 |
Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Forbiddian |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 06:19 AM
Lmao, play a bit of DotA recently?
Downloaded, I'll post a review as soon as I finish this keystone trigger on my map. |
Forbiddian |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 08:47 AM
***THE PREMISE***
You control a hero and an old man in a buying area and you’re partnered off with a teammate. The buying area plays basically like a mythodea, you buy units. The units are controlled by a third party and walk toward your opponents. Your opponents are doing the same so their units go toward your heroes. As you buy more troops, your income increases (allowing you to buy more troops) and you can change the type of units that you get (three tiers, similar to mythodea).
***SUMMARY REVIEW***
This map borrows heavily from the mythodea genre. The mechanics of surviving are different, the mechanics of attacking are different, but somehow it feels exactly like every other mythodea. Maybe it’s just that I’ve right-clicked my thousandth Old Man and I’m becoming one, but I really want something… NEW. This map tries, and you can tell it’s a mythodea from a new angle, but this map fell short of its ambitions.
It’s basically a mythodea with the added “feature” that you can’t micro your troops. And it’s more bug infested than the bag of Safeway Brand Sugar I bought earlier today. It was a good price, but I bought ten pounds of sugar and only got 5 pounds of sugar and 5 pounds of bugs. Seriously (this happened earlier today is why it’s on my mind, I’ve still got to return the bag).
It’s as though nobody had ever played this map before earlier today.
That said, the trigger use in this map (apart from the bugs) is quite well done. I hadn’t heard of Xerxes before, but don’t simply judge him based on his cliché handle. Judge him on his silly map name (no, I’m just kidding). He uses many ambitious triggers (and a lot of custom triggers). Some didn’t work, but he blends different effects I hadn’t seen before in interesting ways.
I know there are a lot of ticket stubs from designers looking to pair off with triggerers. Although I don’t have particularly good things to say about this map, this guy’s triggers show some really good stuff and a lot of effects other people wouldn’t have attempted.
***PLAYABILITY: 1***
Huge marks off for causing bugs that made the game unplayable.
[IMG]http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z5/Forbiddian/WhatsWrongWithThisPicture2.jpg[/IMG]
And this happy fellow built some houses in our playpen.
[IMG]http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z5/Forbiddian/WhatsWrongWithThisPicture.jpg[/IMG]
Edit: Links didn't work. Screenshot is of units denoting the selection pads running amok.In the second one (maybe the first, I forget), a guy built houses everywhere in the selection zone.
After that, one person quit and I bagged screenshots of that and quickly followed him out the door.
But mainly it lost points for requiring an unheard-of NINE player slots. I’m serious (I vaguely remember that he listed a lot of player slots to play this one, but it didn’t register with me until I actually clicked to host this map online). NINE player slots for a 2v2 game. The fewer players in the game, the easier it is for others to host. Not only does it take a long time to fill up 5 player slots with computers, but it makes me look like an idiot when I’m like: “No, no, this map is 2v2.” One person quit my game saying, “Noob designer” and probably others didn’t join seeing that 5 slots were filled with computers (or that my game was 6/9 with no other humans in it). I know that there’s no way in hell I’m considering joining an x/9 game just based on the lag.
Come to think of it, I did screw up by not putting the right major gods for the computer players. Oh well. Maybe the map wouldn’t have had so many bugs if I’d hosted it properly, but I cbfd memorizing 9 different major gods and player slots just to play this. I doubt anybody else would, either.
I almost forgot to mention that the first few minutes were dreadfully boring in testing. And everyone gets a ceasefire (or maybe just the amazon, you said unique GPs, I dunno, I got amazon both times I tested it). The first few minutes are spent microing your old man to get the most explosive exponential gain possible. You could easily make this game exciting from right off the bat.
***BALANCE: 2***
Honestly, I didn’t get this far. However, I will bet anybody 100 dollars and my position on the review team that I would have rated this a 1/5 if I’d actually played through this map a few times. Benefit of the doubt, 95% confidence interval, blah blah, 2/5.
One word: Exponential. Two more words so that makes sense: Power scaling.
“As you get stronger, you get stronger faster.” I don’t understand why so many maps fall back on this. I know it’s reasonably easy to script in, but it makes the map’s balance AWFUL. It means that the game breaks down to “who gets the better start.” And who does get the better start? 99.9% of the time, it’s the host – he’s played it before and he’s not going to waste a few seconds here or there looking at eyecandy or reading instructions. When a game has exponential power scaling, it needs some SERIOUS checks and balances to get it to work. The leveling system is wildly insufficient to check the advantage players get from having a better opening.
***CREATIVITY: 3***
I had a hard time with this one. On the one hand, all the individual mechanics of the game have been done dozens of times. Buy units with an old man, send them at your opponent. You level up based on kills. Bleh. On the other hand, I hadn’t seen them done TOGETHER before. The premise seemed kindof interesting in that regard. You’re also supposed to get points in creativity for e.g. naming units, making everything interesting like that. Reginleif is named, “Amazon” which is pretty creative (I’ll hand it to him, the Reginleif in my next map is named, “Quarterback”). I didn’t see any other named stuff or anything else that really stood out.
I want to talk about the custom sounds in this game, although they didn’t affect the rating. On the one hand, having sounds KICKS ASS! I love when maps blend sound effects like when you level up, you hear a ding. When instructions are given, the map talks to you. When you’re in combat the music changes, etc. etc.
I do not like custom sounds at all. I think that they’re a hassle, and my personal philosophy is that they’re dishonest to our responsibilities as map designers working on particular medium. I know nobody else shares my philosophy. Sometimes they’re cool, and I let my philosophy slide in those situations.
I hate custom sounds in multiplayer games. The only players who get the sounds personally downloaded the map from AoMH. Even if one guy likes it and rehosts it, he’ll never hear the sounds. A full 90% of your audience will never hear those sounds.
But if there’s one thing I despise, absolutely anathema is when people make you go get shit for no reason. You made me go get shit. You made me download an extra 3 megabytes. You made me listen to them all, just so I could tell you the following, “You’re writing a map for Age of Mythology. Age of Mythology has built in sounds. The sounds are not identical to the sounds in Warcraft III, but there are many similar sounds. They’re both RTSs. You could have made your map better for 90% of the people who are going to play it (and less of a hassle for the other 10%) if you’d used the sounds that were already in the game. None of the Warcraft III sounds added anything to this game over the AoM sounds.”
***MAP DESIGN: 3***
People have given me a hard time (inc. my design partner) because I give people high marks in Map Design and low marks in Balance and Playability. Just so you know. I kinda liked this map design. I know that there was a lot that could have been done to make it much better, but the map wasn’t an eyesore or anything. It was nothing special. The contrast between the lava and the green grass of the surrounding battle zone was kinda much for my tastes (maybe some terrain blending between the two?), but this map is far from an eyesore. The store is pretty well polished as well. Unadorned, but not an eyesore == 3/5.
***STORY/INSTRUCTIONS: 5***
I think this is a stupid category for multiplayer scenarios, and I’m going to talk to *someone* about it when I can unlazy myself. I am extremely lazy, unfortunately. Like most multiplayer maps, there’s no story, but, the instructions are clear. I used to be more of a Review Guidelines Nazi and only give 3/5 for those, but that’s totally unfair. This map had really good instructions, though: no spelling errors and quite good spacing/overall appearance to the instructions.
***BUGS***
Ungrouped --> LumberSign --> Change Name (2) unassigned target.
Instead of Percent Damaged >= 99, you could use Is Dead. It works fine online (and there’s a potential bug when a hero is reduced to 1% hps and is proclaimed defeated despite being able to heal). 1% hps might happen, especially with Ceasefire cast at the last second.
The healing towers heal 0.1 hps every 500 ms. 1) 0.1 hps would round up to 1 anyway, I’m 99% sure. 2) Timer 500 ms is bugged, causing it to fire sporadically. You’ll want to use “Timer ms accurate” or better yet increase the hp gain and decrease the refresh. When your character has 2000+ hps, healing 5 every 5 seconds ~= 1 every 1 second. It’s only under the unlikely situation above that it would make any difference.
You need to use the effect End Game for the game to end.
[Edited on 08/07/08 @ 08:51 AM]
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Killer_Dong |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 09:27 AM
are you an official reviewer forbiddian? cuz you should be if your not :D |
Forbiddian |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 10:42 AM
Yeah, I am, but mainly bored as hell.
I need help on my map, lol, for some reason (probably because I screwed up) the announcer says everything twice. It just started happening. I'm sure that SOMEWHERE I have another trigger that fires it again somehow, but I can't for the life of me find it or remember putting it there or even remember why I would do something so stupid.
I'm basically procrastinating going through every single trigger in my map to find it, which would take like one hour. |
Yeebaagooon
Staff |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 11:11 AM
He is, but Papaya is on holiday and can't fix the title up right now. |
Xerxes 3902
File Author |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 01:02 PM
First off, thank you for all the feedback Forbiddian. I really appreciate it and your comments will allow me to go in and fix the things you described so I can update the file.
However, I would like to address a few things to your comments.
1. 9 Player slots
Believe me, im no happier about it than you. However 1-4 covers the players, 5, 7-9 are neutral for shops/eyecandy, and 6 is the creeps. I dont know of any better way to accomplish what I need done, and so Im stuck this way unless there is a workaround.
2. Only the Amazon gets the ceasefire, youre correct.
3. Grass/lava blend
Have you ever tried blending grass and lava ;)
4. Bug-Is dead
I tried that first, however, since they are campaign heroes, they never "die". They lie on the ground at 1 health and wait to be resurrected. For the defeat conditions to work correctly, I used Percent Damaged=99%, and it seemed to work ok.
5. Lumber Sign
Thank you, will edit
6.Fountain of Health
It worked fine when I tested it, but Ill try the ms accurate suggestion.
Thank you again for the feedback. I had tested this before, but its hard to find 4 people willing to sit through a test, so I appreciate your effort. I will do what I can to update the file and improve the game.
Finally, I have just returned to AoM after a year or more, and I wanted to make a stupid minigame for 4 people to kill time on. Looks like I partially succeeded ;)
PS I hate DotA[Edited on 09/01/08 @ 05:18 PM]
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Forbiddian |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 07:53 PM
You could do this: 1-4 Players AND shops (have players control the respective shop units and reduce their speed to zero or use statues), Gaia == mobs. That way it's an even four players for a four person map.
If you think that looks bad, do 1-4 Players, Gaia/P5 shops/mobs.
If you need three players to do the shop triggers, then you're doing something wrong.
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z5/Forbiddian/LavaBlend1.jpg
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z5/Forbiddian/LavaBlend2.jpg
Not my best work, but I just wanted to show some of the gradient choices between absolute lava and grass A. It would be much more realistic stretched out over a wider period (my transition happens in like maybe 10 hexes and 8 intermediate textures. It would have been much better with ten textures and 20 hexes, but it didn't fit in one screen capture. |
Xerxes 3902
File Author |
Posted on 08/07/08 @ 10:39 PM
I think I can remove some of the players. I just have the 3 extra in case i needed specific cultural eyecandy, but since I only really need the Egyptian torches, I think I can switch player 5 and take out the others.
Ok you did it. TBH, I didnt spend a ton of time on map design, but Ill incorporate your use of blending. If you want to do both and email it back to me [andrew(at)bruceb(dot)com] thatd be great ;) Id give you a nod in the credits
Thanks again[Edited on 08/07/08 @ 10:40 PM]
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Milkman Matty (id: Khan And Steak) |
Posted on 08/15/08 @ 09:44 AM
I would also change the distance to units needed to buy that unit. The distance is too high, if you are standing on the right side of the Wadjet you buy a Sphinx even though it is 2 squares away. I would make it " |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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2.8 | Breakdown |
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Playability | 1.0 | Balance | 2.0 | Creativity | 3.0 | Map Design | 3.0 | Story/Instructions | 5.0 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 300 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 3.77 MB |
Added: | 08/07/08 |
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