• 🏆 Texturing Contest #33 is OPEN! Contestants must re-texture a SD unit model found in-game (Warcraft 3 Classic), recreating the unit into a peaceful NPC version. 🔗Click here to enter!
  • It's time for the first HD Modeling Contest of 2024. Join the theme discussion for Hive's HD Modeling Contest #6! Click here to post your idea!

Zephyr Challenge #5 Poll

Which one is the best?

  • Stonebludgeon's Submission

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Zypher's Submission

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • By.The.Hell's Submission

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    22
Status
Not open for further replies.
Level 11
Joined
Feb 18, 2004
Messages
394
Zephyr Challenge #5 Poll


Welcome to the poll for the latest Zephyr Challenge. Please read through the rules before voting!


  • Each user can only vote once in the poll.
  • You can not vote for yourself. If a voter has the same IP as the author then the vote will not be counted and it may result in the disqualification of the entry.
  • You can not create multiple accounts to vote for an entry in the poll. If a voter has been found to be using multiple accounts none of the voters votes will count in the final result.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Level 4
Joined
Aug 9, 2004
Messages
70
SHIELD OF JUST
+ Umm, nice and effective spell, cool effects, clean GUI coding and more...
- Not too much creative. Delayed effect seems not the primary effect.

FROST VORTEX
+ Really nice coding, some awesome effects, easy to implement...
- Delayed effect does not fit well to your spell.

SEAL OF RIGHTNEOUSNESS
+ Entertaining, effects are nice.
- Too many leaks, didn't like the coding aswell, hard to understand the use of the spell.

TOUCH OF NATURE
+ Seemed like you laboured much to this. Could fit good in most of the maps, and I like the way it has lots of conditions. A little hard to understand.
- Man! Why did you use all those formula's. x*str + y*agi + z! That's so confusing and unnecessary. Even if you are going to use these formulas, tell the caster that the damage depends highly on str and slightly on agi, or something.

DANCE OF FIRE
+ Nice coding. Creative.
- Bad effects. Should be non-targeting(starting from the feet of the caster, diablo like). Delayed effect is not the primary I guess. I'm not sure.

FADE AWAY AURA
+ Could be a nice idea if improved greatly.
- Bad coding, bad effects.

CURSE OF ATTRACTION
+ Creative and funny!
- You forgot some leaks, not effective coding(could be improved), need some improvement here and there.

EMBER
/ Nothing much to say, this spell is nice but I saw this-like spells a lot of time before. Sorry for this bad-looking comment.

SHADOW THUNDER
+ Really nice looking spell, you've improved it a lot I guess,.
- Not sure if it fits the contest.(like you.) But I liked it, as I said before. Too complex coding.


I tried my best with my bad english to comment on your spells guys. Hope you won't get angry to me. I voted for Shadow Thunder. Although I don't really like GUI coding, I enjoyed the spell. Thanks for this beautiful concept. I hope someone made comment for my spell too. Btw Frost Vortex is in the second place for me. Becaues it has some really good coding.
 
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
Great it is up :D
Let see my reviewing...

Shadow Thunder
+The spell is original
+Some nice spell effects there, models and icons fit well.
+The spell is Mui (it seems)
-The use of custom value could interfiere with other spell systems.
-In my opinion you had too many variables, and the code and variable names looked complex.
-At some points the flames was still there after casting it. I dont know where in the trigger, but it made the target un targettable by that unit until another hero override the effect.

Curse of Attraction
+Spell is original
+Indeed matching the theme
-It is not mui
-The effects were alittle boring
-The knockback leaks 2 points every time the "pick unit in unit group" runs.

Shield of Just
+Nice imported shield, the icon, sure, even though it was a wow-one, the yellow blockshield and the floatingtext was really nice.
+Spell seems to work Mui, well coded Gui
-Uses custom values, as i said before, it could interfiere...
-Spell is abusable. If an enemy would cast the shield on himself, and you use the attack bug (pressing stop multiply times at a very small intervall) the shield would register it as a block, and get removed pretty instantly.

Dance of Fire
+fit the theme well, referring to the last effect explosion
+well coded
+perfectly mui
+the idea is original
-the spell could be better actually, by using vjass. Also Handle vars are not that popular anymore, since the system is less efficient than newer ones.
-the spell lacked special effects indeed. The last explosion seems too small. The fire line was also kind of narrow.
+/-if the caster didnt move after the cast no fire arised either. Was that intended?

Global Time Shift
+Original idea
+Matched the theme well
+Well coded jass
+/- Mui? I wonder what would happend if you cast it once, waited ~2seconds and casted it again.
-Is the multiply struct methods really needed? It would have been easier to use struct create or struct allocation instead.
-The spell lacks effects and sounds. it made it alittle boring.

Nuclear Missile
+Idea was fairly original, though, I've never seen it in warcraft;)
+Massing of effects, in this case actually necessary.
+Fits the theme
+Well coded Gui, and mui
-In my opinion this would be great in a cinematic map. However, in a playable map it seems to imbalanced.
-I could not think of anything more than, like most of the other spells, Gui is inefficient:p

Ember
+Spell fits the theme
+Seems Mui
+Effects fit - bot the intial and the final.
-The greatest flaw here would be: You can move the flames and break the circle... Which is actually a very bad thing. Add locust to the flames next time.
[] There wasnt alot to say about it. Could be positive, coud be negative

Seal of Rightneousness
+Spell uses nice effects, I was surprised, I thought they were imported.
+Fits the theme well
+Is Mui
-inefficient Gui. An example, in the Seal release trigger, it could greatly be optimized by a outer loop and an inner loop instead of writing the inner loop multiply times.
-Too long tooltip. It didnt display all words at the end of the tooltip due to this, and it was hard to understand what the spell did.

Touch of Nature
+Original
+Fit the theme, fit the hero, fitting spells
[]Autocast is a nice idea, if it stacks. I didnt check if it did though
-Could be abusable (in a dumb way perhaps, but still), using unit is attacked is a bad option since you can bug it by pressing stop multiply times (this would be for the enemy I think)
-Way too long tooltip here as well.
-Spell is not Mui, but however, Mpi.
-The spell code is way too inefficient. It could be greatly reduced by adding the constant for the level of the spell in a formula instead of checking if the spellevel is 1,2 or 3 and so on.

Fade Away Aura
+The spell is original
+The spell fits the theme, I guess, referring to the final destruction of the units.
[] To be honest I dont really want to be patronizing in any way. The spell was not in my taste at all. When testing it, I got debug messages on the screen saying you leaked locations (and groups) (in jassnewgenpack this is). The effects and code could have been alot better.

----

Results

None of the entries was perfect. But the one who gets my vote is Dreadnought[dA] (with Dance of Fire)
Even though it lacked with the effects and used an old attachment system, it gains my vote. Also, that he managed to do a pretty spell without using vjass is good too. it was also easy to understand, as tooltip and as a code.

FROST VORTEX
+ Really nice coding, some awesome effects, easy to implement...
- Delayed effect does not fit well to your spell.

Hm? It had a minor effect for x seconds, then a huge blast+shatterpossibility. That is a delayed effect.
 
originally, my spell was only able to be used if you have a nuclear missile ready.

You'd have to get the techtree high enough to produce a nuclear missile, and it would cost alot of gold.

then once the nuclear missile is ready then you can use the ability.

once you use it, then you have to produce another nuclear missile to use the spell again.
 
Level 6
Joined
Dec 28, 2007
Messages
178
-The spell code is way too inefficient. It could be greatly reduced by adding the constant for the level of the spell in a formula instead of checking if the spellevel is 1,2 or 3 and so on.

well it really doenst check the spell level but the buff level(1-2-3)
i know it's a bit...low spell but i didn't plan to get the gold, i just wanted to have fun with my first challenge :) and show people how can a noob coder create a custom spell ;)
 
Level 17
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
1,261
Let me take a look at these spells. They all seem very nice that's for sure.
I moderate them in a way a normal player that makes maps would do.
Because you make spells to put them inside so.
A) They need to look nice.
B) They need to be usefull at a certail level.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frost Vortex by Eccho
[+] Had a cool 'vortex' look about it, so looks are good.
[+] It worked fine so thats a plus.
[-] The 'ubersplat' or ground texture of the spell did not look that cold to me.
[-] The starting period of the spell where the ice is spawning did not deal any damage.

It's pretty good but not all that special to me. Some people can use it inside their map but there is no real originality in it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seal of Rightneousness by Stonebludgeon
[+] It worked fine.
[+] Good effect's on that blast.
[+] Could be very usefull in maps.
[-] Too long tooltip.

It was a good one, it does not need anymore work in my opinion.
Could be very useful inside certain maps with paladins.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Touch of Nature by LightBloOD
[+] It seemed to work.
[+] Had a nice and original idea.
[-] The effects were rather lacking.
[-] To long tooltip.

It was oke, but not all that good work a bit more on the effects to make it look like it's realy doing something special.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shield of Just by Ribenamania
[+] Awsome effects!
[+] Works good but was hard to realy notice because of the high health and low damage, at first I wasn't sure if the attacks were being blocked but it's oke.
[+] Very usefull in maps, both futuristic ones (for tanks) and medieval ones (mages).

Well, I could not find any bad things about this spell, it looked awsome, it did what it was supposed to do.
Just a very usefull and good spell.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dance of Fire by Dreadnought[dA]
[+] It was a good idea.
[+/-] Effects were oke but not to good.
[-] It was rather buggy, it did not harm sleeping units when I used it.
[-] The flames sometimes went a different direction when I used it. (I went north flame went east.)
[-] Rather hard to test it surrounded with so many creeps.. you can't walk. xD

Perhaps you should base it of a target unit instaid of a target ground? I don't know that much about creating custom spells but it seems better to me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Global Time Shift by Yddohu
[+] It does seem to work, whatever it does.
[+/-] Good effects when units go back.
[+/-] What is the use of this spell? It just brings them back to their location after a while as far as I know.

Sorry, but it's realy hard to figure out what it realy does, atm I don't find it very usefull for in maps.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fade Away Aura by Zypher
[+] Nice growing and fading effects.
[+/-] It had to much lighting that gave a bug on the terrain, but this is a WC3 issue you could not help it.
[-] Did not work with the flying units, they are units aswell so they need to fade aswell in my opinion.
[-] I could not check if their attackspeed etc. actualy went up.

It's rather usefull but a bit rigged for both sides, I like the idea alot thoug.
Very original and can be used in maps but has some minor problems.
Let's not forget the nice situation, they get stronger but if you can last long enough they go away! =:D

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Curse of Attraction by By.The.Hell
[+] It had good effects, not to flashy yet very nice.
[+] It seemed to work and was very usefull in my point of view.
[+] The hooking thing was by far the best part, I just like the whole spell.
[+] Does not work on self. :p

Yeh, it was a good spell.
It had good (not the best) effects and it could be usefull in some maps.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ember by kewlthis
[+] A extremely usefull spell.
[+] Very good idea of a spell.
[+] Very nice effects.
[+] Works perfectly.
[+/-] Kinda needs a longer cooldown.

One of the best spells I have seen till now. Don't change it in anyway except the cooldown, but that's not even a real problem.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nuclear Missle by Just_Spectating
[+] Seemed to work.
[+] It kills you (hero) if you stand to close aswell! =D
[+] Nice effects, really they own.
[-] Could not move when I launched it?
[-] I kinda think it should kill everything (the radiation does not affect heroes?) to make it more realistic.

It is a very nice spell and very usefull for futuristic maps.
Nice effects, the water waves should be tinted green though not blue but that's nothing important.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shadow Thunder by Beast(TrOg)
[+] Nice effects.
[+] Could be usefull.
[+] Original.
[-] It was wayyyyyy to powerfull in my opinion.

It was a oke spell that could be usefull to some people. I didn't like the esc button thing you had to do for the spell though.
It was a good thing you made a map with waves etc to test this spell against different units.
You also gave good descriptions, bonus for all of that.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion
It was very hard to test all of these spells, it took me 2 days! o_O
But some of them were realy worth it.
As I stated before I'll test the spells to see if they are usefull to people to use in maps, and ofcourse they need some good effects or else it will be to boring.

My vote goes to... Shield of Just by Ribenamania.
It was a very usefull and nice looking spell.
You can use it in medieval games but you can also use them in futuristic maps as a special shield.
It was very creative and just looked uber.

At number two we have... Ember by kewlthis
Also a very good spell that looekd nice, did what it had to do.
And it had this nice demonic feeling to it. :p

And third place goes to... Seal of Rightneousness by Stonebludgeon
It was very usefull for paladins but other units can also use this spell.
Effects were good enough, I liked the 'explosion' the best.
It's just a nice buff kinda spell. =)

All the other spells were also very good, be proud of yourself!
I'm looking forward to more insane, uber spells!

- Airandius
 
Last edited:
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
[-] The 'ubersplat' or ground texture of the spell did not look that cold to me.
The what? are you referring to the same effect which flame strike uses when cast?, the green one?
[-] The starting period of the spell where the ice is spawning did not deal any damage.
The fact is, that it should'nt deal any damage. It shall only slow attack and movement speed. I know it is easy to miscomprehend that tooltip. It says "boosts 20 damage/second" in level one for instance. I simply mean, that the longer you cast, the more damage is the final nova possible to do. Eg, if you only cast it for 2 seconds, in level 1, it will deal 40 nova damage not 100.
 
xD .. I've not seen all or the spells.. but.. here's my review! :grin:

FROST VORTEX

[+] Really nice coding, good effects, easy to implement
[-] Delayed effect does not fit well to your spell.
[-] Did not show a buff of slowing down the unit's attack and movement speed

SEAL OF RIGHTNEOUSNESS

[+] Nice idea, effects are nice.
[-] Some leaks, did not like the way the contestant code it, hard to understand the use of the spell.

TOUCH OF NATURE

[+] Description is good, effect are good.
[-] The calculation thing is confusing :confused: Just as Yddohu said in his reply.

DANCE OF FIRE

[!] Not much to say bout' this

FADE AWAY AURA

[+] Could be a nice idea if improved greatly.
[-] Has leaks, bad coding, bad effects.

CURSE OF ATTRACTION

[+] Creative and funny!
[-] Some leaks, not effective coding(could be improved)
[-] Need more effect

EMBER

[+] I like the circle shape ^^
[-] Dummy fires can be selected and move. :(

SHADOW THUNDER

[+] Really nice looking spell, you've improved it a lot I guess,.
[-] Too complex coding.

Just to give out my opinions.. no hard feelings. ^^
 
Last edited:
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
[-] Delayed effect does not fit well to your spell.
I still dont get that. I asked of the definition of a delayed effect. Ofcourse you all could see it different but I do a channel for 5 seconds, and the a nova... not a delayed effect no?
[-] Did not show a buff of slowing down the unit's attack and movement speed
I can agree, I should have put a buff for it. The reason why I didn't is that blizzard's system doesn't support buff placers and will not stack with each other. It could end up by displaying the wrong thing.
 
Level 3
Joined
Apr 17, 2008
Messages
27
My vote went to eccho for obvious reasons. Tho everybody made a nice job as far as I can say. Keep it up :)
 
Level 17
Joined
Jun 12, 2007
Messages
1,261
The what? are you referring to the same effect which flame strike uses when cast?, the green one?

The fact is, that it should'nt deal any damage. It shall only slow attack and movement speed. I know it is easy to miscomprehend that tooltip. It says "boosts 20 damage/second" in level one for instance. I simply mean, that the longer you cast, the more damage is the final nova possible to do. Eg, if you only cast it for 2 seconds, in level 1, it will deal 40 nova damage not 100.

1) Yes I'm referring to the same effect which flame strike uses when casts, the green one.

2) Thanks for explaining your spell a bit more, this will earn you a extra point since I understand your spell better now.
 
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
Well, perhaps you are right. The green effect is perhaps not the best one when looking at the ground. In the air though, it could actually fit as a winterchilling vortex which is damaging the air units (I know, there was no air units on the map, but lets see it that way:p). But indeed I agree with you. Thats why i tried to make the spell as editable as possible, without changing the code. It makes the spell effects and damage etc easier to change without messing around in the main jass code.
 
Level 6
Joined
Dec 28, 2007
Messages
178
TOUCH OF NATURE

....
[-] The calculation thing is confusing :confused:

what the hell? Everyone says its..'confusing'... but why? its damn easy. I worked hours to balance it :D and i think it is farging balanced -i mean the damage. I tried to do every part of the spell to not to be 'fixed'. I love when there're a lot of conditions in something :D
anyway: i agree that its tooltip it's too long :S and has a cheap effect.
 
[-] Delayed effect does not fit well to your spell.
I still dont get that. I asked of the definition of a delayed effect. Ofcourse you all could see it different but I do a channel for 5 seconds, and the a nova... not a delayed effect no?

Well.. I meant the effect of the delayed effect.
It's kinda like ... icy and I did not liked the circle shape. I think it's just I that preferred ice like lich's nova more. This is the best to me.
 
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
OK, then you have made yourself clear. Sure, I could have been taking other effects. In fact, one of those I am using looks alittle like that phoenix missile. But on top of it, I added another effect, thus I thought the one I had was to small. Thats pretty much it.
 
Level 4
Joined
Aug 9, 2004
Messages
70
I still dont get that. I asked of the definition of a delayed effect. Ofcourse you all could see it different but I do a channel for 5 seconds, and the a nova... not a delayed effect no?


Delayed effect does not fit in your spell doesn't mean that your delayed effect is not a delayed effect. Imo, i just said that delayed effect (damaging those around with a nova) should be another effect, not damaging them. (Maybe trap those in a frozen cage or sth else...)

[+/-] What is the use of this spell? It just brings them back to their location after a while as far as I know.

Thanks for critique, just to answer your question, it also does take the mana's and health's of those units to their traveled positions. For example you were standing at x1,y1 pos at some moment with z1 health and t1 mana, when you time traveled to x1,y1 pos, you'll have z1 health and t1 mana.

Just like the nerubian weavers ultimate, but a global, and time related spell.

Ribenamania, you've just copied my review or what?

+/- Mui? I wonder what would happend if you cast it once, waited ~2seconds and casted it again.

It's %100 mui. Those who has been affected by time travel won't be effected again till the effect is gone.
 
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
Delayed effect does not fit in your spell doesn't mean that your delayed effect is not a delayed effect. Imo, i just said that delayed effect (damaging those around with a nova) should be another effect, not damaging them. (Maybe trap those in a frozen cage or sth else...)

Alright I think i got that clear then.

It's %100 mui. Those who has been affected by time travel won't be effected again till the effect is gone.

Great, that is nice as well. But I still think it lacked some effects and sounds. Actually, that would be the reason why you didn't get my vote :_:
 
Level 4
Joined
Aug 9, 2004
Messages
70
Great, that is nice as well. But I still think it lacked some effects and sounds. Actually, that would be the reason why you didn't get my vote :_:

Nice to hear that. Thank you.

Btw, it would be so nice if you show me where I leak with a pm or something else if you can find time to do. Because I'm so bad at cleaning leaks and want to improve myself.
 
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
well I dont think you leaked at all. I would just say that the "Getting" methods are inefficient, since you could get them all by using an attachment system like CSData (since kattanas handle vars are not up to date), and then gain the struct data id instead of all pieces.

Also, I saw some of your code, not only that, but more, which was inefficient.
take example this part
JASS:
function GTS_Eff_Cond takes nothing returns boolean
    if ( not ( GetUnitState( GetFilterUnit(), UNIT_STATE_LIFE) > 0 )) then
        return false
    endif
    if ( not ( GetUnitTypeId(GetFilterUnit()) != GetParticleId() ) ) then
        return false
    endif
    if ( not ( GetUnitTypeId(GetFilterUnit()) != GetCasterId() ) ) then
        return false
    endif
    if ( not ( IsUnitAlly(GetFilterUnit(), g_TP) == true ) ) then
        return false
    endif
    return true
endfunction

It could be done wih a few lines only, and its much faster when used.
JASS:
function GTS_Eff_Cond takes nothing returns boolean
    local unit u = GetFilterUnit()
    if GetUnitState(u, UNIT_STATE_LIFE) > 0 and GetUnitTypeId(u != GetParticleId()) and GetUnitTypeId(u != GetCasterId()) and IsUnitAlly(u, g_TP) then
        set u = null
        return true
    endif
    set u = null
    return false
endfunction
 
Level 4
Joined
Aug 9, 2004
Messages
70
The reason I use getters and setters is that I'm coding in C++ most of my time, and that's how we C++ programmers do when we need private variables. That's kind of a bad habit I think, but as far as I know (it could be a little slow but) that's also good programming. (Keeping the private values safe.)

And about the condition stuff, I wonder why the codes you typed are much faster? It could only be, because of setting GetFilterUnit() to a local variable, and destroying it at the end. But comparision speeds are equal I guess. (Need a pro's opinion at this point.) That's not really necessary, because the way you did it is much more beautiful then mine and i'll use it from now on. Thanks again.
 
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
Well, in your example you are checking it to be not (boolean) with 4 ifs
In the other example, yes setting it as a local will be faster, but then you check only one if. So I would assume it is alittle faster, not mentioning that the overall size of the code is decreased.

No problem btw:p

Edit: I know, I think you got this from converting a gui condition into jass. The code there is always inefficient
 
Level 23
Joined
Nov 29, 2006
Messages
2,482
yeah, but you know, you are not allowed to change a spell now to make it more popular and gain more possible poll votes. I am just saying it, not because I would mind, but morally I do. Rules are rules.

However you just updated the spell elsewhere. I see no harm... yet :p
 
Level 7
Joined
Nov 4, 2006
Messages
153
SHADOW THUNDER
+ Really nice looking spell, you've improved it a lot I guess,.
- Not sure if it fits the contest.(like you.) But I liked it, as I said before. Too complex coding.


Yea, I have a new habit of making the GUI to complex (using custom value for MUI, etc.) And yes, I improved it a bit...just made more effects obvious really though and tried to make the tooltip more clear as you said.

Shadow Thunder by Beast(TrOg)
[+] Nice effects.
[+] Could be usefull.
[+] Original.
[-] It was wayyyyyy to powerfull in my opinion.

It was a oke spell that could be usefull to some people. I didn't like the esc button thing you had to do for the spell though.
It was a good thing you made a map with waves etc to test this spell against different units.

- It's probably only slightly overpowered (I think), but against multiple units, such as the Militia wave, it does seem way too powerful doesn't it...oh well. I thought that adds a little more fun to it, but hopefully it's not for like a Footies type map where it would easily win a game.
- I only had the Esc thing to start the waves, so that the player could choose when he/she was ready to test the spell, after using it a couple of times on the Target Practice units.


SHADOW THUNDER

[+] Really nice looking spell, you've improved it a lot I guess,.
[-] Too complex coding.
QUOTE]

I don't really have a problem with your criticism, but it seems like your whole comment was copy and pasted then edited a little from Yddohu's critique. About 80% or more of it is exactly alike.


Thanks to the many people who have already gave good feedback. All of the spells look nice, good luck.
 
SHADOW THUNDER

[+] Really nice looking spell, you've improved it a lot I guess,.
[-] Too complex coding.

I don't really have a problem with your criticism, but it seems like your whole comment was copy and pasted then edited a little from Yddohu's critique. About 80% or more of it is exactly alike.


Thanks to the many people who have already gave good feedback. All of the spells look nice, good luck.

Excuse me ... if you really think that my comment is a copy and paste.
Then here's my new review.

Shadow Thunder
[+] Nice looking effects
[+] Has delayed effect
[!] Dark lightning effect sometimes cannot be seen (In dark places)
[-] Still the same, coding is too complex
[-] Too powerful (Can actually attack units anywhere by right clicking it)
:grin:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top