The basics of footmen should be known to everyone: Every one of the 12 players has a base, around which units regularly spawn. Additionally, the players may choose a hero. It is with these two elements that the players try to beat the other teams.
In total, there are 4 teams of 3 players each, and each is situated in one corner.
The normal game mode is 3 vs 3 vs 3 vs 3, but the map also includes an alliance system, which makes 6 vs 6 battles possible.
Since there are many footmen maps around, I wish to quickly summerize some of the features of this map (with many more still in planning).
Features:
57 heroes, out of which 33 are custom made (the other 24 being the standard game heroes), and 10 of these being secret heroes (only to be gotten by a random choice)
Level Range from 1-24, featuring the classical 4-spell-system (with an improved one in planning for future versions), where the standard spells have 8 levels and the ultimate spells have 4 levels.
Well over 140 items
13 shops in total (if I did not miscount), out of which 2 are creep shops.
6 races to upgrade to, 5 tiers in total (humans, orcs, undead, night elf, naga and void)
Unique Weapon / armor system, with 3 defensive races and 3 offensive races, which brings in more dynamic, but really good balance.
22 recipes, most of which can be upgraded twice.
Many custom spells, items and creeps allowing for interesting tactical possibilities (for example a Spell mirror, a Soul Gem and the infamous Herald of Doom)
A Bank system: You can buy a bank account, from which you will gain an interest rate of your stored money, thus allowing for exponential growing wealth. The bank account and the interest rate can be upgraded.
An alliance system: Allowing you to ally yourself with another team, which makes for great 6 vs 6 battles.
An equalizing system for both bounty and expierience gain, finally removing the stronger get stronger, weaker get weaker notion of Footy-type maps.
A random race system: What was long standard for heroes is now also implemented for races: You can choose to have your race selected for you.
Different speed modes: Allowing players to vote in the beginning how fast they can level up their heroes, upgrade their tiers and set the speed of the game
Different money modes: Allowing players to vote in the beginning for extended money modes (getting more money) or handicapped money modes (losing money over time, only for pros)
Some just-for-fun stuff, like a weather machine and a jukebox to play music.
Mass unit controllers for moving and/or attacking in great numbers, for players who do not like micromanagment.
Towers abound: You can upgrade many towers to protect your base from all kinds of enemies.
Diffrent versions:
Apart from the standard (AP = All pick version), there are others, including:
All Random Version: The players can only take a random hero. - Download here -
Complete Random Version: The players can only take a random hero and a random race. - Will only be available in 2.0 again -
Tiers Random Version: The players can only select a random tier. (Heroes are unaffected) - Will only be available in 2.0 again -
Further are planned.
Credits:
Note:The credit has to go to all the persons who assisted me during the long and problematic, often frustrating, creation process of this map. I wish to here thank all of them dearly, for without them, the map would not have been possible.
Seskal: He helped me mostly through ideas. Even though he has no clue about map making, he tested the map over and over with me, for which I owe him thanks.
Calex3: For one spell which I copied: His great watersplash. It looked to terrific that I could barely control myself when I saw it. It's triggered and really well done, a big thanks to him.
Asgard_Ragna: Another person whom I wish to thank in particular, for his great Holy Domination; spell which I used.
PrMosquito: He created a great model, Icy ghost, which I used, since it was so cool.
ap0calypse: For his honest and constructive criticism, which helped me make the map much better.
Binche88: For her good ideas and help in some trigger issues. Even if she knows nothing of mapping, she does have some nice ideas.
Wellwish3r: From Thehelper.net-forums, who greatly aided me with the bounty system by giving me a JASS code to implement. A great thanks to him!
trb92: Greatly helped me when it came to the new jewel system.
Troll-Brain: For his excellent system that I used for the map.
tlactar: For his feedback and help in making the map better.
What comes next?
This version, 1.94, is the final one before 2.0 comes out. (Unless of course a major bug shows up in the meantime).
The features for 2.0 are vast and all already planned, however, it is not certain how many of them will get included in the release.
As for the popular question "when?", I can only say that I am not sure, however, you can expect to see it in the month of september or october.
The reason for this huge time-frame, is that I have limited time since I am very busy now, and some of the features are not easy to implement. Besides containing a huge amount of small glitch and bug fixes, as well as introducing far better balance, the game will also include many new things, but I'll let that be a surprise. Look forward to it.
Changelog
Changelog Version 1.95
Ok, this is just a quick hotfix.
It makes the map workable for the (disaster) patch 1.24, and hopefully makes the alliance system work again.
I wish you all a great game and good fun, until 2.0 comes out. (A final note: I have written down a whole boatload of small adjustments that need to be made for 2.0, which will hopefully come in september or october.)
Changelog Version 1.94
The final release before 2.0. This introduces a few changes:
First, it (hopefully) fixes the crashing-bug when one wishes to make an alliance. Next, it reduces the overall gold-cost of the creeps in the creep shops.
It also introduces the usual balance adjustments (like the royal commander not having the overpowered "holy domination"-spell anymore.
Have fun with it!
Changelog Version 1.93
Another update, which fixes a few balance issues, and should now completely remove the jewel bug found in 1.92 HF. Buying from other banks now gives the player owning the bank the bought item, instead of the player buying it.
As for the equalizing system, this was made a bit less sharp, so low units do not gain an incredible awful lot of money when killing high level ones.
I hope that this map should be as fun to play with as possible. Shouldn't any significant bugs be here, I will also release the AR, CR and TR maps, and this will be the last before 2.0
Have fun!
Changelog Version 1.92(HF)
This was a quick hotfix, (thus HF), introduced to remedy a bug which I had forgotton to correct, and was found by tlactar (thanks for your help!)
I hope that now it should be resolved. Have fun!
Changelog Version 1.92
This version introduces quite some changes, including, but not limited to:
Many bug fixes, basically all which have been reported or found otherwise.
The equalizing system has been fruther optimized, and the mathematical functions which power it have also been worked over, making it much more balanced now
Void Tier 5 now spawns Voidwalkers, and Void tier 4 spawns Spectres. This was done to avoid the problematic spawning of flying units.
The bank system now should work without any problems, including a small animation to show how much money has been generated
Each player now has his own bank, and trading jewels has been disabled. This leads to the interesting situation that each player can do with his jewels as he sees fit, thus eliminating the problem that one team cannot upgrade to Tier 5 because one player used a jewel for something useless. Buying from each others' banks has also been disabled.
Overall balance changes concerning a few heroes have been made. Some have gotten stronger, some have gotten weaker.
I hope you all enjoy this version.
Changelog Version 1.83
I hope that this is the last update in a while. It corrects a final bug with the jewels system.
Enjoy, and thanks to all who reported the bug.
Changelog Version 1.82
Yet another hotfix, after some players reported weird incidents, like players getting more money, when they should be getting less and vice versa.
This is hopefully now fixed, and will be the last hotfix before 1.90 comes.
Have fun!
Changelog Version 1.81
A really quick hotfix, fixing an important issue concerning the problem of the bounty system to give strange numbers of money when applied to heroes.
This is now fixed and should work well.
Note: Balance is still pending, and will probably become much better with 1.90
Changelog Version 1.80
This version introduces many many updates, far too many to name.
However, the bullet points include many balance changes, which should greatly aid in making the map more fun. Additionally, the errors and known bugs from the previous version have been removed.
What is new is also a totally new expierience and bounty system, which calculates gained expierience and bounty in dependence to a number of factors. Having more or less heroes now yields no advantage or disadvantage.
The bank system has also changed a bit, but will change even more with version 1.90.
I wish you all a great game!
Changelog Version 1.71
A quick update to correct a few bugs, which (as always) appeared when the new version was being tested in multiplayer for the first time.
It makes the terrain slightly smoother, corrects the bug when winning the map enemy units still can spawn and makes a few overpowered heroes a bit weaker.
Have fun!
Changelog Version 1.70
This introduces a whole new terrain (with my hopes that it is better than the last one). It also includes many bug fixes and adjusments for better balance (thanks to all users who wrote me about that!).
Also, alliances are now better implemented, and the bank system has been upgraded.
Enjoy!
Changelog Version 1.61
This introduces a few new changes, mostly small bug fixes and corrections, nothing major.
Changelog Version 1.60
Version 1.60 introduces more balance changes (the ones that were necessary), and includes a new balance system in respect to how many heroes a team has, to make it harder to level up real quickly with fewer heroes.
Aside from that, the power of the Herald of Doom was reduced, and overall gameplay improved. Have fun!
Known bugs
There is still a problem with the alliance: It is possible to form an alliance with a team that is already allied.
This can cause serious problems for the system, as it depends on one team not having more than one alliance.
It is recommended to avoid this bug, by not trying to forge an alliance to a team which is allied already.
This bug will be corrected with the upcoming 2.0
Final words:
I would always love to hear about comments, bug reports, ideas, praise, (constructive) criticism, suggestions and so on.
As always, have fun and enjoy!
Yours,
Ouguiya
Moderator Comments (Recommended)
17:53, 16th Jul 2009
PurplePoot: Your description is an excellent example for new members, and from ap0calypse's reviews as well as the votes of others this seems to be a step in the right direction for footman wars maps. I'll mark this as "reviewed" as ap0calypse's reviews are excellent.
Approved with a 4/5 rating as suggested by ap0calypse and based on the votes.
This is the first review, if I have interest in checking out the updated version, I will add a checklist of what you have done/still need to do.
If you ask me to check the updated version, I might also do it...
Review #1
General
General:
Not original, everything has been done before (and better)
Description is good, but could be better.
It has been made from scratch, instead of the lame "copy and pretend it's mine"-thing going on with these types of maps.
Gameplay:
Very short shop-range
You can control all units, which is good
You should set a maximum number of units (and maybe upgrades to increase that maximum, that's up to you).
Good item-combination
Terrain/Objects
Terrain:
Another footmen-wars-terrain, pretty bad.
Try to make your map different through the terrain, this is just a copy of the other maps.
Flat, bad tile positions, the blizzard cliffs look somewhat outdated.
Objects:
Lack of custom items
Attack/Armor types well implemented
Lack of custom spells
Overall
Yet another Footmen Wars, but this one actually has a good item combination system and is more balanced than others (except the fact that melee-heroes can attack faster than ranger heroes when fully upgraded).
Unfortunately, it has a lot of standard standard abilities and items, the units haven't been customized too much either and that makes the game more boring.
Rating: 3/5 (Useful)
Vote for Approval
Reason:
The original rating would be 2.6/5, but since you've at least try to balance the game (which hasn't been done in a lot of other footmen wars) and have a good combination system, I have uprated it.
You should really improve the terrain (use a good tileset, create a theme, anything but this).
Review #2
Checklist
[ √ ] Terrain has been changed [ √ ] A reward after 2500 kills (which is insanely much at b.net :p) [ √ ] Some really nice spells (I didn't check all custom-heroes yet) [ √ ] I actually like the idea of giving credits inside the spell-description [ / ] Still no AI [ / ] Not a really appealing description [ / ] No advanced tech (not necessary) [ X ] "Poisonous Weapon" ability learn- and normal button switched [ X ] Typo: "The mochine of doom" (?) [ X ] Still no max. unit-amount [ X ] I still didn't go "yay" when checking the items/heroes
Overview
The map has improved, but it still lacks some features.
My rating has increased (3.4/5, +0.8), but the general rating remains the same (3/5).
The AI isn't necessary and neither is the appealing description (it contains all information, but it doesn't look very well), but it gives the map a better look.
The max. spawn amount is a way to reduce lag (you can also create modes/commands to set the max spawn amount), it isn't a hard trigger anyway.
Good luck with your map.
__________________
Last edited by ap0calypse; 10-04-2009 at 02:57 PM.
Alright, on to my first review...
I have played the map a few times, and feel that I have seen just about half of it, but I think that I can still give a rating based on that:
Terrain: 3/5 - Yeah, it is classical, but it is not that annoying either. I guess this is because I haven't played too many footmen maps, but I think it's not that bad, but it's not THE killer terrain either. A 3/5 seemed apporpriate.
Custom stuff: 4/5, yeah, there are many things in there which do come from the classical Frozen Throne, but I do not really think that this is such a bad thing. A good old mana potion is simply more familiar than some exotic new stuff.
Heroes: 5/5: The classical ones + 33 new ones really is quite a boon. It's also not the Footmen Frenzy heroes which everyone else had and which really were annoying. A 5/5.
Items: 5/5: A real awful lot (140 items does sound impressive). Even if some are classical, there are many new ones which more than make up for it, and they are quite well balanced.
Units: 5/5: The new armor / weapon implementation system really blew me away. The idea of having 3 defensive and 3 offensive races was cool. Although it creates dynamic, it still allows balance, something which rarely coincides.
Balance: 5/5 I have been tiptoing around this point for some time, but it has to be said seperatly: The balance simply is great. No units are obviously stronger than others (except the armor and attack advantages and disadvantages of course), and most of the heroes are quite well balanced too. A few exceptions, true, but I think these will soon be balanced out too, so no reason to remove a point here.
Additional things: 5/5: The just for fun stuff, like the flying merchant, the weather control center and the jukebox really are fun, but even better is the amount of control the user has with the Mass unit controllers to move and/or attack things everywhere.
Additionally, the "Random race" option really was something I enjoyed: Having a race at random, for a little bit less money, but being fixed on it. It's just a great way to make things more interesting.
Total: 4,57: Close, but in terms of mathematics, one should round up when it get's above x,5, so this is what I will do.
I am hoping that Ouguiya will make the terrain a bit nicer, and continue to add features, but I think he deserves his 5/5 poits for this one.
I'm sorry for the delay, but here is my review:
Since this is a very good update (in my opinion, at least), I won't change my previous post, but add a new review here.
Review #3
General
General:
The description on the hive and in-game is very good
There are multiple maps for other modes, does it have a reason why you didn't add all those modes in the same map?
Gameplay:
The "Equalized" armor says "undead" and has an incorrect tooltip.
For some reason, there didn't spawn any Raiders when my Orc tier was level 3.
This game was very balanced.
The alliance/XP/gold/spawn-systems were good and didn't cause any trouble as far as I've seen.
Terrain/Objects
Terrain:
The terrain has been greatly improved, featuring a hellish landscape
The weather effects have been applied in a good way
The items are pretty good, though there are some standard ones, it fits the rest of the map (standard + custom heroes / standard + custom items).
The races weren't original, even if you only change the models and names it would make it more interesting (for me), instead of footy's bandits or something... it's just so it wouldn't look like every other footmen wars, unless you want to keep that part alive.
The amount of heroes/items is pretty good, as long as you realize that quality is better than quantity ;)
Overall
This is quite an interesting footmen wars, the terrain, item-system, damage-/armortypes, balancing and 'fun stuffs' make it different from other, lower quality maps.
It still needs some finishing touches (fix the tooltips, as said before), a triggered fog (or edit it in the "Options" screen, next to the "Description") might make it look better and the current bug(s) need to be removed.
Rating: 4/5
This map has been improved a lot since the last update, the most important part was the terrain, which is very well done.
I usually don't like hellish landscapes, because they're too plain, but this one was actually good.
You've certainly earned those 4 thumbs up (5/5 is very hard to get, so 4/5 is a really good rating ^^)
i'd give changing the void tier 5 a thought... flying units are just damn imbalanced. If you went for tier 5 undead for example you'll have no chance to win
guess i found a bug or two, dunno if they'll already be fixed in the 1.90er version:
when in... dunno, i think restricted or handicapped mode (the one where you can't level past lvl 4 for the first minutes) my hero got stuck at level 4 though everyone else was able to level up past lvl 4. It worked again a bit later, but it's still a big disadvantage...
another one was: in the endgame i wanted to buy some jewels for tier 5, but 2 of them just disappeared... bought 5, got 3... quite odd...
Is it possible that the items combined, so you got 3 (combined) items, instead of 5 (standard) items?
I agree with the game mode description and Tier 5, though... that should be changed ;)
hey, there is quite some time between the posts :D
The jewels are the 2nd resource (instead of wood) - so not directly items.
Ohh, sorry for both my answers ^^ (I wasn't looking at the time, I saw the same person 3x in a row, so I answered >.>).
About the jewels: I thought you meant a necklace, a ring, ... (things like that: jewelry xD).
Well, in any case I cannot answer this, though the jewel-bug seems strange... if it's just a normal Gold -> Wood-item (standard), then it would be very rare if it bugged.
I have heard numerous requests for changing Tier 5... Although it was not my real intention to do so, I agree in respect to it being very disadvantageus to orc or something.
1.90 was already prereleased as I am writing this, but the bugs found made it impossible for me to upload it here.
The version currently stands at 1.92. Should that be as bug-free as I'd like it to be, I will upload it here too.
Thus, this leads us to the following:
Tier 5 will be changed from tier "Void".
@Tlactar: Thank you very much for the bug report. I rechecked it, and found some weird thngs. They should be fixed now. Should they still persist in 1.9x, please let me know.
As for the jewel bug: I am really at a loss here. The way players get jewels is by simply buying them, as items, which then adds one jewel. (This is the usual "gold-give-item", and not triggered, so I find it very strange it bugged.)
I will, in either case, take a look at it again.
Thanks again everyone, so long.
__________________
What are signatures good for?
To prove how good you can copy and paste statements by people who are cleverer than you!
To introduce this post, I must say that I boycott footmen games with a passion. My friend begged me that I play this one, so I gave it two games. The style of game it presents is generally not fun, and instead of focusing on the army, most maps allow people to make their heroes so powerful that teching up is almost useless. This map has the most potential so far at becoming an actual good footmen map, but it still has some work to do. I understand it is still a beta, and thats why there is so much work . Anyway, here comes the rant :P
Idea to incite more battles
The first battle always takes a while to start, and whoever goes out to the middle first is going to find themselves fighting a multi-front battle and be behind from the get-go. There should be (at least an option to enable, but better if it is default) a system that counts the number of units in middle, not counting heroes or summons. Whoever has the most gets an amount of gold per unit every few (5) seconds. It could start at 2 and increase as the game progresses. This could also be turned off when the difference is less than 5 or 10 (unless no enemy units are present) this would occur during a battle.
Mode picking inconvenience
My friend and I like to play with very specific modes. Overspawn and standard. This leads to a fast and fair game. However, the host isn't the one who can pick the modes, everyone can! We routinely tell people which modes to pick. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. It would be very nice if the host got a menu at the beginning "I decide" and "Everyone votes". This way, we can choose the modes without having to leave the game and ban everyone in that game for not listening. We tell them before the game starts, so they are free to leave if they don't like the modes.
Tier Balance
Tiers aren't balanced at all. I got tier 1 and 7 attack upgrades before getting a hero. The riflemen had an attack that did 24-42 damage, making the average damage about 33-35. When I upgraded to tier 2, the militia only had 20-28 damage. Their AVERAGE damage is the LOW END of tier 1! The only bonus they get over riflemen is 110 hp. Given that I sacrificed a ranged attack for that, it isn't an upgrade at all. Tier 4 finally got above the tier 1 top end damage. That is horrible. I haven't done any looking at this for other tiers, but humans definitely need tier 2 to be stronger.
Attack type balance
I know the attack types are supposed to dictate some strategy, but I think they are a little overdone. After the first battle closed in the same game as above, I had about 150 kills(4 hero kills!) and everyone else had 20-40. I had a solid edge. My partner decided to buff his hero up. At the end of the game, Id almost killed bottom left, but they left before I could get gold (this should be fixed). Top right left almost off the bat. Bottom right had one person tech naga, and the other one buffed their hero. The turning point of the game was when bottom right sent their units to bottom left, thinking there was still a base there. His army was tier 2 nagas. I had tier 3 humans with more attack and armor upgrades. His army rolled mine over. The game ended after his tier 3 army rolled my tier 4 army and they took our base. I was 3 jewels away from tier 5. There's no way this is balanced.
Sure, one can argue that attack types make it interesting, and my partner should tech to counter the other (naga in this case) race, but what happense when their partner counters your partners tech? They get two counters to you, unless there's some sort of a triangle in which my tech counters theirs. But this argument is useless when an army can destroy another army that is one tier above them. The tiers definitely need to upgrade units more.
Summon balance
I have a replay of this if it is required. The shadow hunters Serpent Wards benefit from attack upgrades. This makes them way overpowered. Not sure if any of the other summons benefit from this, but it should definitely be fixed.
Mercenary shop
I've tried using the units in the mercenary shop, and none of them, I repeat NONE of them have been worth the money. Many of the active skills cost too much mana and aren't worth the effect. Summons are easily sniped by heroes. Any passive effects such as an aura are cheaper if you buy the aura item from the shop. I gave a quick glance over them in single player, and none of them looked worth the money. The most expensive summon appeared to be a dragon with 2 charges. It did about 50 damage with splash. For 2700 gold, this is simply a waste. This summon should DESTROY because as far as I am concerned, the enemy just got a tier up on me, or they are almost 3 jewels closer to tier 5 in the long run.
Level tomes
I think level tomes would be an interesting feature in the game, but the maximum stock is 1 and they cost 1250 gold. If you're hurting THAT much for a level, you likely don't have the gold or can't afford to use it on the tome. If you have the money and the tables are fairly equal and you are looking for an edge, this is far from giving it to you. If you can afford to waste the money, you can't even waste it fast enough for it to be of benefit, and by this point you're probably already maxed on your hero level. I'm generally level 20-ish if not already 24 by the time I get tier 5. No money can be wasted before tier 5, because the first person to tier 5 generally wins. Level tomes should be much cheaper and come to at least 5 stock.
Incorrect tooltips/small immolate rant
Cloak of immolation says it does 125 damage per second. It really only does about 30. One of the values should be changed to reflect this. I think the damage on it could stand to be buffed a bit. If you get this item before spending any other gold, your hero can't make good use of it. HP is too little and your hero can easily be focused down. Even if he doesn't get focused, the damage doesn't seem to be nearly as significant as getting tier 1. This only gets worse as you get the item later -- by being smart and getting survival items first. Can't recall how much the recipe costs, but the immolation on that is only 40 per second. That is not nearly powerful enough. That one should be at least 80-100 with how easily the higher tiers can focus down a hero. I personally hate hero buffing, but I think they deserve this.
Review of Footmen Chronicles
Alright, on to my first review...
. Anyway, here comes the rant :P
